Rice University is a small, much esteemed higher education facility within the city of Houston. The university has enjoyed a high standing throughout the tertiary education community in the United States and beyond for decades.

The university is self-contained in that it is situated on a unitary campus This means that the University has charge of its environs and can take and implement the necessary steps to become a model for ecological responsibility and serve as an exemplar to both its home city of Houston, and to other universities in the United States, if not else where.

The drive towards a small ecological footprint should take the form of a business model, with a mission statement and projected goals and a stated means of attaining them. The University would be advised in seeking and gaining sponsors as indication to the world at large that Rice University has the support of others who, in turn, might decide to adopt similar aims as part of their business model.

Good Corporate Governance and Citizenry, and Corporate Excellence extend to the world in which the corporation finds itself.

Rice University is well paced to become a Center of Excellence for Ecological Studies and their Application, should it choose to do so.

The President of Rice University is urged to adopt this challenge which will surely bring greater honour and prestige to the university he serves.

In closing, the writer wishes to state that he has no desire or intention of having his mane attached to whatever the university chooses to do, since the call must be agnostic.

#P3 We are not KIDS (strike through that)! no mo’. We’re children without a future thanks to you.

Performance piece, title is provisional.

The remedying the ill effects of our current way of starts at the local, starts with us as individuals. The piece does not address how this might be done. Rather, #P3 gives voice to the children throughout the world who are striking from school and engaging in other acts to draw attention to the fact that, should we continue as we are doing, they will have no world in which to live.

Emma Lim, 18, launched a climate change movement this week called “#No Future, No Children” that includes a website where other teens can take her pledge.

“I am giving up my chance of having a family because I will only have children if I know I can keep them safe,” she says on her website. “It breaks my heart, but I created this pledge because I know I am not alone. … We’ve read the science, and now we’re pleading with our government.”

By Thursday afternoon more than 1,200 children had signed on.

Nota bene: Kids are baby goats. Children do not deserve to be diminutized

Not sure at this point how the performance piece will structure. One thing for sure – no kids, only children.

“Let’s ensure, for our great-grandchildren, our great-great-grandchildren, and those far beyond them, a planet on which life is possible.”

The organization must not be a US oriented one. The organization must not be exclusionary but secular and above and beyond the petty rivalry of nation states. The mission must have the means to be universal and appeal to all who have the will and commitment to support it’s aims.

It needs to be said from the outset that any organization is doomed to fail at launch, or soon after, should that organization not have clear aims and goals. Every baby is born through care and attention.

The aim is simple: We can, as individuals world wide, significantly help reduce global warming. We cannot devolve to others, our would be leaders, what is ultimately our responsibility. We are not talking of using paper instead of plastic, laudable though such efforts are. No, we are talking of individual efforts initiated at a community level where people take charge of our future on the planet in their own way and within their own ability, reduce impact of the perils we face. The pyramids were built by thousands, albeit by slaves. Ants build vast structures.

The answer is simple: There are millions, billions, of people upon the planet. The combined effort of even a fraction of those can have an enormous impact. Far more than any corporation or collection of them, or of any government. The lack effort of these latter, in some cases, borders on the criminal were the means to prosecute implemented.

The means are simple: To reduce the waste in our lifestyles. We need not be frugal nor penurious, but modest and practical in the means that we adopt to lead a less profligate and careless lifestyle. For example, in the number of vehicles we own, and even a modest reduction in their use will, multiplied across the globe, have a significant cumulative effect. The small will be made great through sheer numbers.

The name of the organization is, at this stage, a working name. The International means that the organization is the platform for daughter organizations which are organized on a regional, country and local level which collectively combine to pursue the aims and objectives of the parent organization.

The governance of the organization will be developed as the concept, the project, moves forward. To do this, best practices will be adopted from elsewhere. We are not going to reinvent the wheel.

The organization’s mission is to be supported by the wealthy of the world. By wealthy is meant relative to the poor, hungry, disenfranchised and dispossessed of the world.

There is no reason on this earth why such latter individuals should not join in the efforts spoken of here. But simply that their contribution will be different in kind. After all, the organization seeks to act to preserve their interests, as well as others, in what surely lies ahead in terms of global warming. It is you who are worst affected by the prospects of results of global warming. But the organization will gain value should any of you choose to participate. Minds and action are equal, hungry or not.

To those reading this, I say: Should you own your own home or rent it, have a job and have some sense of security, you are wealthy in these terms. You have the power and ability to conserve which is what the organization is all about, guiding and harvesting those efforts.

The organization recognizes, and wishes to respond to, the call for action in an effort to halt and, perhaps, even reverse current trends which indicate the destruction and and annihilation of our home, this earth. This language might seem to be hyperbolic but it is not. The present prediction of ”… by 2030 such and such will happen,” or “… by 2050 the world will be …” lie too far into the future and, given the universal habit of procrastination, “… oh, we have plenty of time ,,,”, we will not act. More immediate dates and targets, more realistic ones, need to be adopted, at least by this organization.

The concept of We Can Conserve International.org imagines a nonprofit organization which acts as a magnet to draw to it those citizens, wherever they live on the planet, who wish to contribute, as citizens. to the reduction of global warming. Such citizens understand, and are rightly alarmed at, the prospect of our total self-destruction.

We Can Conserve International,org serves as a platform to provide information and guidance – and harvesting the results and effects of such efforts – as to how citizens, as individuals or locally organized groups, can make a significant difference in reducing, and even reversing, the trends we are currently witnessing in the destruction of fellow species, ice melting, and sea and ocean temperature rises, and the desertification of some parts of the world. Such citizens who are drawn to We Can Conserve International org are informed and alarmed at the prospect of what the data trends we are told of by scientists and concerned organizations, terms of the data, the scientific evidence which shows with absolute charity the perils we face., who are wish and are willing to lead or help lead the organization into the real world.

Global worming is not a matter of belief. The facts are too numerous and multifaceted to not be true. Hard scientific evidence is not theological. And the studies have been carried out over a large span of time. How much evidence do you need to know that we are the guilty party. Of course, were this not true, we would not have been, and largely still are, in denial.

Should we continue on our present course (see the references below) without effort to reverse it, we face a dire world which at some point, sooner than we presently predict, will result in the total destruction of all life on our planet.

We, those of us who wish to, can make a difference, a significant, if not profound, difference. Should individual and community groups act, then the possibility exists of billions of people all over the planet achieving what corporations and governments can never achieve. We can conserve without being frugal, without greatly affecting our present lifestyle however and whatever that is, with notable exceptions; the powerless, the hungry, the disposed and displaced, we can recognize that we are profligate, create vast amounts of waste without thought. Citizens, filling the recycle bins is not enough. Doing good with good intentions is futile. What is required is a change of heart, a fundamental recognition that, in the end, we are all species, we are inseparably part of all life forms. We are not superior. We suffer from hubris and are alone among our fellow species in our wanton self destruction. No other species acts as we do. We are out of kilter, possibly even, out of control.

­This is a launch document in preliminary draft form. The intent is to draw others who wish to have a hand in the formation of the organization so that its realization is not the result of a single person.

Those interested may contact the author through comment on his blog, Towards Better Democracy, malcolmdbmunrodotorg

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